Cool Card Design of the Day9/29/2015 - Determined Challenger will hit one of your creatures. Do you want to choose or shall I?
Hmm, Gatherer hints that at common it should just deal 2 damage, like Skirk Commando. Fair enough.
Cool Card Design of the Day
I don't believe this can be Common. This is a creature you absolutely must block every turn, or you lose your board. That creates board stalls and makes the game revolve around it. Textbook Uncommon.
ReplyDeleteAlso has the potential to make all your opponent's 2/2s feel dead in hand, leading to unfun gameplay. Especially if this somehow becomes unblockable or gains power. Add a "sacrifice CARDNAME to gain the trigger and I can get behind it at common though.
DeleteI agree that 2/3 is a bit pushed for this card, but 2/2 is clearly reasonable. The ability has gone on 1/1s and 2/1s at common, and a 2/2 is not that much harder to kill. Also, don't forget that it can always be double-blocked, if for some reason you don't have 3 power or 3 toughness on the battlefield by the end of turn 4.
DeleteYou act like that from 3 mana, 2/2's are extrimely importend. I Think this will raise the steaks of this card. However, I would change it in Fighting, so sometimes it has to die if you attack with it.
DeleteWhether this is too strong or not is entirely dependent on the set it's in. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if Dev dropped a toughness, added a mana, or bumped it to uncommon, but none of those are inherently necessary.
DeleteI quite like the idea of making it fight its target instead of just hitting it.
I disagree about the statement that this is not necessarily an uncommon.
DeleteThere is a difference between "too strong for common" and "too board warping for common." Shifting around the environment and massaging the numbers could alleviate problem one but will never alleviate problem two for this card (unless you did something really silly like make it 1 damage and there be no one toughness creatures in the format).
I think Stealer of Secrets is the closest we get to something this board warping at Common, and this is much past that line. You could certainly give your creature Frenzy 2, which is weaker but pulls this back into common. (Though development does not like Frenzy because mechanics that encourage players to leave back so many blockers lead to board stall-y unfun games.)